


I'll come calling

by uppityminx



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Air Nomads (Avatar), Air Temple Island, Character Study, Confessions, F/M, Falling In Love, Family, Married Life, Motherhood, One Shot, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25172353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uppityminx/pseuds/uppityminx
Summary: It’s quite a thing, being married to a very important man. [Pema over the years as a lover, wife, and mother.]
Relationships: Pema/Tenzin (Avatar)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 67





	I'll come calling

**i. lover**

She first only knows him by the furrow in his brow, his graceful limbs, the shock of his pale skin against the red of his robes. As time goes by, steadily as it does on Air Temple Island, he materializes in the spaces after morning meditation, the vegetable garden at dusk, the cocoon of the kitchen as she tries her hand at fruit pies. 

It’s all very polite, very distant, until she finds him one day at her favorite spot on the island: the cliffside overlooking the ocean. He hardly knows her, couldn’t say a thing about her other than her name, but he’s upset (and lonely) and it bursts out of him all the same. He’s struggling to recruit new acolytes. He hasn’t met the goals he and his deceased father had set for the coming year. It’s hard to live in a world that no longer seems to understand their ways.

She doesn’t know the right thing to say to this man, only what she would say to anyone else. There are lots of wonderful things about the world, she tells him: a deep sleep, the crash of waves, the first peaches of the season. Pema hardly ever finds herself homesick anymore, but she does miss the sweet fruit of her hometown, ready to pluck just as the days grew long and languid. She misses fighting her parents for the ripest picks, laughing as juices trickled helplessly down their faces, wiping her sticky fingers against their shirt sleeves. 

_And of course,_ she adds, _being here, on the island. Rebuilding something once lost to the world._

Then the son of the Avatar smiles at her for the first time, and Pema is reminded of just how many wonderful things there are in the world. 

She gets a laugh out of him, eventually, recalling the story of how she’d fallen in a barrel of molasses on her ocean journey to Republic City. They’re walking side by side on their way to the evening meal, and she’s breathing in time with his steps, quick and light. He suddenly halts and she nearly skids to a halt, having fallen out of rhythm. He’s looking at her with something like sorrow, deeply set in the premature lines around his eyes.

_Sometimes I wonder if you should be living in the city._ It almost sounds as if he had forgotten she was there, unconsciously speaking his thoughts aloud. _Living a full life._

Her response is easy, is true. _I don’t know what could be a fuller life than this._

Those days seem a world away now, sitting at her beloved cliffside and nursing her wounds. She’d often thought about what it might be like to finally grab his hand as it swung by hers, take his face in her hands and kiss the space between his brows. But she’d spoken words instead, raw and splintered at the ends.

_If you want me, I’ll never leave your side for as long as I live._

The unadulterated shock in his eyes had been enough to flood her with shame, to turn and flee before he could say a word. How arrogant, she thinks bitterly, to offer herself to him. Pema doesn’t think poorly of herself, but she knows where the lines are drawn: offspring of the heroes of the Hundred Year War, common Earth Kingdom girl. Lin Beifong may make him unhappy, but she, too, is born of greatness. Maybe it’s just _right_.

She’s going over all the ways she’s been right and wrong when he appears, joins her at the cliffside. This usually turns her head but now she cannot bear to look at him, the now-familiar shame and sadness welling within her. “I will leave,” she whispers, wondering if the ocean might swallow her up from all those feet below. “If that’s what you wish.” 

Pema still doesn’t look at him but hears a sharp intake of breath. “I don’t wish that at all,” the voice beside her murmurs, stricken. “Is that what _you_ wish?” His question shakes at the end.

She thinks of cool mornings digging in the garden dirt, afternoons in the sun with the acolyte elders, laughs over meals in the dining hall. 

She thinks of the silences, of treading the shore, of remembering what it felt like to breathe for the first time.

“No.” It comes out strong, despite the moisture threatening to spill over with one blink of an eye. “This is my home.”

“It is,” he agrees. Tenzin pushes something into the palm of her hand, soft and fleshy and fuzzy, and she knows without glancing down that it’s a peach, the first of the season. He gently takes her chin and tilts her face toward his. “And you are mine.”

**ii. wife**

It’s quite a thing, being married to a very important man.

As a child, her father had once shown her a picture of him in the newspaper, side by side with his own father in sepia glory. The Avatar’s face was open and amused, with a hand on his son’s shoulder. Tenzin peered solemnly at the readers, a hint of grimace signaled by his down-turned mouth. 

“That’s the man who’s going to save Air Nomad culture,” her father said — and pointed not at Avatar Aang, but his son.

_Mine,_ is what he murmurs against the crest of her collarbone, split open in a way he saves for her alone. _Yours,_ is what he whispers as she cradles him in her arms, muffled by the warmth of their bed. 

But Pema knows that as long as she’s been his, he’s never fully been hers. Bits and pieces of Tenzin had been broken off since birth, starting with _hope for the world_ and ending with _the Avatar’s legacy._ He is greedily looted by the tabloids and history books alike, wondering if he’s done enough, wondering if he could ever do enough. 

She thinks of their children, bright and beautiful and allowed to _be_ children in a way their father never was. _Ours._ Not the world’s. Not yet.

Pema reaches forward for a fresh towel, firmly squeezing out the excess water before placing it over her husband’s eye. His head is in her lap, his breathing deep, and if she squints, it could be any other drowsy afternoon — he begs into their room with a migraine, and she soothes him with the softness of her hands, her thighs, her voice. Only the towel is quickly starting to stain a deep red, and his breaths are sharp, jagged with pain.

She can still feel the grip of Tenzin’s hands on her shoulders, Rohan squirming mindlessly in her arms. It’s funny, how fragile they both are: her husband, the airbending master, and their son, an infant. There’s a coldness to him as he confronts Zaheer, and it doesn’t sound like the man she knows at all. Tenzin’s anger _burns,_ for better or for worse — it flashes and singes and flares.

But that’s her _husband,_ Pema reasons. The other man, who firmly nudged her away to escape, steel in his gaze as if he didn’t recognize her, was the legacy. She imagines that if he’d died then, leaving his family but saving the new airbenders, that those damned history books would look favorably upon him. She doesn’t know if that’ll be the case, now that he’s lived. 

Pema’s gotten used to the idea of grieving the legacy. It seems that the arrow on his head has marked him for death as well as hope. The idea of wiping out the last airbending master will always be — already has been — a temptation for someone, somewhere. She remembers when they were first engaged, and Tenzin took her hands in his and reminded her that the fate of the Air Nation would never truly be safe, that the son of the Avatar would never truly be safe. He asked her to continue reviving and building the Air Nation if he couldn’t, to find another partner in life if he was taken away from her. She clutched him close and said yes to both, but crossed her fingers during the latter. 

Yes, she’s used to grieving the legacy. Her husband, no. Not yet. 

After the towel dries, Pema promptly peels it off his face and dips it back in the bowl. A gasp croaks out of him and she instinctively strokes his temple, a favored spot on those drowsy afternoons. As she watches the red start to muddy the clear water, she wonders if the pit of fear in her chest will ever really go away. Perhaps it’s been lying in wait since the day they wed.

It surely is quite a thing, she thinks, being married to such an important man.

**iii. mother**

_Mother of the Air Nation,_ they call her. It was supposed to be _Mistress_ instead, an acknowledgment of her position as the Master’s wife. It sits uneasily on her tongue, and Tenzin isn’t especially fond of it either, but that was his own mother’s title (although most dare not call her anything but ‘Master Katara’) and who was he, to scoff at tradition? 

One day, one of the acolyte children calls her ‘mother’ by accident. He turns red, but it soon catches on among the other kids — mother, mom, even ma. The adults join in, too, teasingly referring to her as ‘Mother Pema.’ What seals it is when Tenzin, while introducing her to a new council member, says, “This is Pema, Mother of the Air Nation.” He pauses, confused by the slip of his tongue. Then he looks at her, smiles, and nods as if to say, _yes, she certainly is._

_I’ve loved the Air Nation for much longer than I’ve loved you,_ she reminds him later, grinning. _I guess it’s only fitting._

Some people say that it’s because she’s so adept at motherhood that Tenzin married her in the first place. It’s supposed to be an insult, she knows, and it makes her husband seethe. But Pema has never found fault with that — her own mother was the kindest person she ever knew, and Tenzin’s mother the bravest. If they claim her prowess in such a role, then she’ll wear it with pride. 

It’s in the grips of motherhood when it first happens. Something’s changed since the harmonic convergence, and not just the general spiritual energy in the world. Before her acolyte initiation ceremony, she had roughly cut her hair to just below her ears. She had wanted to feel the brush of the wind at the back of her neck. She remembers how much lighter her head was — since the convergence, she’s felt like that. Light. 

Now, with her son squirming in the crook of her arm, she grits her teeth as she reaches down to pick up the remnants of that morning’s breakfast. Rohan is a certified toddler now and much too fussy to be carried around all day, but she’d rather not chase after him while trying to focus on the task at hand. 

With a whine, Rohan wriggles out of her arms, unbalancing her sharply. The plates tumble out of her arms and she reaches out, bracing for a noisy crash. It never comes. 

Even Rohan stops his whining to stare, his mouth half open. The plates of food are spinning wildly in a sphere of air, and it looks like a game to him, something his father or siblings might do. He reaches out happily, laughing as he’s blown back by the force of the wind.

Pema locks the two of them in the bathroom, depositing Rohan in the bathtub as her hands tremble. She remembers how Bumi had struggled to bend at first unless under threat, but she has no such issue. She inhales deeply, and as she exhales, the force of her breath promptly knocks over her son. 

She rushes over, quickly setting him right with a kiss and apology. Rohan only regards her with a puzzled look. He thought he knew every bit of his mother — comforter, feeder, protector — and it was like a secret layer was revealed before his very eyes. Perhaps that was only part of growing older.

She keeps it tightly under wraps during the day, and if she thinks she’s being secretive, she’s quickly proven wrong. Ikki asks her at dinner if she’s _old_ now because she’s moving like Gran Gran, with stiff limbs and arms held firmly to her side. Meelo nearly catches the clumsily spinning marbles between her hands, an old trick she used to beg Tenzin to do (if only because she knew how childish he found it).

Some would think her foolish for saying so, but it all seems like destiny to Pema. Her parents, sincere devotees to Air Nation history, brought up their daughter on stories of people who moved like the wind. Once, as a young girl, she climbed to the top of her favorite banyan tree, wondering if she could do the same — or more. She faced the yawning gap to the ground, heart stuttering as her confidence quickly drained. But _instinct is a lie,_ Guru Laghima had written. Pema squeezed her eyes shut, jumped, and landed squarely in the arms of her terrified father.

Like she said: she loved the Air Nation before she loved her husband.

Soon enough, Tenzin catches her too, staring down at her hands and biting her lip as if hiding a smile. It’s morning meditation and she’s usually attentive, but instead she’s thinking about how much she feels like her girlhood self, readying herself in the banyan tree. When she notices her husband’s gaze, she offers a bashful shrug, pressing a mock serious finger to her lips. She closes her eyes before he can respond, but can sense his exasperated huff as if it expelled from her own body. 

He comes up to her after the others have filtered out. He’s in a good mood, she notices. His shoulders are relaxed, his arms swinging lightly by his side. “So can you tell me what’s on your mind, dear?” he asks fondly. The term of endearment feels especially meant that morning, and she’s hit with an almost painful rush of affection. 

Pema imagines she’ll reveal it to him some ordinary day. She’ll catch him in mediation, alone, his brow and mouth tight in concentration. After blowing a gust of wind in his face, he’ll open his eyes in irritation, ready to berate one of their children. When he sees her, he’ll smile but tilt his head slightly to one side, bemused. Then she’ll open the palm of her hand to the sky and let the air twirl in her hand, as it always should have. _Mother of the Air Nation._

As for what her husband will do next: she decides to leave it up to the future. 

“Only you,” she answers innocently, and takes his hand as she leads him out of the pavilion. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This piece flew out of me after my recent ATLA/Korra rewatch. I just love these two, and find the sweetness, support, and stability of the whole Air Family to be very lovely and delightful to watch. It was a lot of fun to fill in a bit of Pema's backstory, and as you saw in the last section, write out my secret hope for her when the show was airing.
> 
> I don't know if this will be of interest to many readers in the Korra fandom, but thank you very much to anyone who takes the time to read and comment. Hope you're all safe and healthy!


End file.
